Category: Anti-Choice Abortions

Boyfriend decides on abortion, then they broke up

From Ingrid, who had an abortion:

“My boyfriend said it was my decision but… don’t have the baby. [Ellipsis In original]. He said, “If you’re my friend, if you have feelings for me, you won’t have this baby.” I felt really sad and disappointed. I think he cared about me even though he didn’t stay with me. We broke up soon after the abortion.”

Anna Runkle In Good Conscience: A Practical, Emotional, and Spiritual Guide to Deciding Whether to Have an Abortion (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishers, 1998) 57 – 58

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Woman convinced to abort by her boyfriend

Donna was in graduate school when she got pregnant. She tells her story:

“I was in complete shock with this news [of the pregnancy], and my boyfriend volunteered to pay for an abortion. He insisted it was the only choice. We could have kids after we got married. I tried to talk him out of the decision, but because of fear and denial, I was easily persuaded. …

[T]he doctor performed a suction abortion. I cried during the whole thing, I could’ve said, “Stop!”

The minute it was over, I wailed, “Why did he make me kill my baby?”

When we left the doctor’s office, we went directly to a church. My boyfriend waited in the car and could not understand the sorrow that overwhelmed me. A few weeks after the abortion, he left our relationship.

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 147-148

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Woman had abortion, feels she never had a choice

This woman’s story shows how some women who have abortions do not make their own choices but are coerced by others.

“When I was 16, I became pregnant by my boyfriend. I decided to keep my baby from the start. For weeks, I followed her development with medical books and pictures.… My hand was never far from my stomach…

When I finally told my parents of my pregnancy, they were devastated. They pleaded with me to have an abortion, but I felt I’d rather die than hurt my baby. When I didn’t change my mind, they asked me to leave..…

Well-meaning people told me that God understood my need for an abortion. It was the responsible thing to do. Having a baby at my age would be unfair to so many people, they said.

My parents said my baby wasn’t a person yet, and the obstetrician agreed. How could abortion be wrong when so many people accepted it? I let my feelings cloud my judgment, and I closed my heart completely.…

I remember wishing that abortion wasn’t legal. People say it gives women a choice, but I felt I didn’t have one. Since abortion was available, it was my duty to choose it.…

[After the abortion] There was a pit inside me that I dared not go near.

Then one day at the movies, I saw it on the big screen: “Hurting after an Abortion?”… I memorized the phone number and called that night… I argued that I didn’t regret my decision, and I did not have feelings to deal with. But I couldn’t say the word baby or look at pregnant women or hold a teddy bear or buy a goldfish or touch my stomach or be reminded that I had a heartbeat.”

She described the way she felt after the abortion as “indescribable emptiness”. She eventually found healing through counseling.

Wendy Williams, Ann Caldwell Empty Arms: More Than 60 Life-Giving Stories of Hope from the Devastation of Abortion (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Living Ink Books, 2005) 79-80

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Doctor: Pressure women to abort for the “social good”

Dr. Harry Harris in Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion:

“In traditional societies, the doctors should only be concerned with the welfare of their patients. But in these changing social times, some may take a wider view of their responsibilities.

They may, for example, consider the family, even if they are not inclined to the idea, should be pressed to take advantage of the opportunity [to have an abortion] for the social good….it is socially desirable to minimize as far as possible the amount of ill health in the community.”

He argues that to give birth to a handicapped child imposes a “burden on society.”

Harry Harris Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion (Nufflied Provincial Hospital Trust, 1974)

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Abortion “poisoned marriage” and led to divorce

From one woman who had an abortion:

“I sit alone in my rented flat, work full time to keep myself occupied, and think of the child who would be 7 ½ now if we had allowed it to live,” recalls a divorced woman in her 40s. Her husband had been “horrified” when she discovered she was pregnant, and he told her it would make him unhappy for the rest of his life. Reluctantly, she had the abortion under pressure from her husband, but it poisoned the marriage and they subsequently got divorced. “The worst aspect of the whole business is that he now says he regrets terribly “the baby business”. He realizes that he was quite wrong. But nothing can heal the divisions of the past. We are both to bitter.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 69 – 70

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Mother forces incest victim to have abortion

Ruth, who became an alcoholic after she aborted her baby, describes forcing her teenage daughter to have an abortion years later:

“I continued drinking and my husband took custody of the kids. He got drunk one night, molested my daughter Rosemarie, and got her pregnant. I believed there was a chance the baby would have birth defects, so I used that to justify my insistence that she have an abortion. She didn’t want an abortion so she ran away. We had her picked up and went before a judge who agreed with me that an abortion would be the best thing under the circumstance. Rosemarie finally relented and had an abortion. Later when she married, she lost three babies due to an incomplete cervix. That was really hard for me because I felt it was more retribution. Because of the abortion and all the alcohol and drugs around her, Rosemarie turned to alcohol and drugs herself… I bought into a lie and convinced myself it wasn’t a baby until it took a breath. That way I could justify my own abortion and forcing my daughter to have one too.”

Kathleen Meikle A River of Tears (2017) 123, 124

16 weeks, this baby could be aborted in any state
16 weeks, this baby could be aborted in any state
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Woman pressured into abortion: “our love turned to dust”

Writer Mary Kenny wrote about a woman whose partner pressured her into an abortion. She says:

“When I said I was pregnant,” wrote one young woman, “It just didn’t seem to register with my lover. “Well, you can get rid of it, can’t you?” He said. I had felt so romantic towards him, so much in love that I thought our love would be forever. With the pregnancy, he turned quite cold towards me. I had the abortion, because that was what he wanted, but now our love has turned to dust and I feel very, very sad.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 69

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Husband insists on abortion, wife regrets it

From a woman who had an abortion:

“I was married: I was married to a man I loved. It’s no good crying poverty to me because I’ve been poor all my life until relatively recently. I knew that his mother would rally round and my mother would rally round, and people would give me things and we would manage. That’s what you do. That’s what life is about.”

But her husband insisted she get an abortion.

“We spoke about it afterwards, when I turned on him in great anger. “I’m glad you’ve been able to go through this with so little apparent knowledge of what you have done [she told him]. You really don’t know what you have asked of me… I am living, and will have to live with, what I have done, and you do not know what I have done.” … I do know that it took me several years to make peace with that one.”

Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 67-68

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Study finds 48% of postabortion women were coerced

Jessica Stanton writes about a study on how postabortion women were coerced into abortions:

“In a study conducted by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, Dr. Ian Gentles, and Dr. Elizabeth Ring–Cassidy published in 2013 in Complications: Abortion’s Impact on Women, the authors asked 101 women to share their abortion stories. When they were asked whether they were “coerced or pressured into having the abortion,” 48% of the women answered, “Yes,” and said that the pressure or coercion was in the form of violence or threat. Concerning adolescent abortion, 8% of minors whose parents learned about their pregnancies from a third-party felt forced to abort; 6% of that group stated they were subjected to physical violence.”

Jessica Stanton “Protecting Women and Girls from Coerced Abortions” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016

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Counselor: parents force teens to have abortions

JoAnne Crough, professional counselor at Meier Clinics office in Pittsburgh, discusses coerced abortion::

“This happens more often than you might think. In most cases it’s the teen or woman’s parents who suggest this way of dealing with the pregnancy. They make it clear that an abortion will “solve everything.” They typically keep the entire process as secretive as possible. The young woman in this situation is extremely vulnerable to being coerced to make the others in her life happy. She has upset those closest to her with the news of her pregnancy. She feels confusion, shame, and fear. She becomes isolated from other forms of support. Combined, these put tremendous pressure on her to comply.”

Sharon Serratore “Coerced into Unwanted Abortions” The American Feminist Fall/Winter 2016

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